Mrs. Tyler sent for the doctor, and while waiting his coming, and after Marie’s recovery of consciousness, she said to me: “Carrie, can’t you think of some way to keep that awful doll away from my darling to-night? Try, child, try!”
I thought hard enough to turn my hair gray, it seemed to me, before I was gladdened by an idea. I went to the door and beckoned Mrs. Tyler, and asked her, in a whisper, two or three questions about an article she had been reading aloud when the storm arose--an article about the water-cure, then the very newest fad. She gave me the desired information, and thus armed, I stole to Marie’s side, and with great seeming secrecy, told her I had a lovely new play, if only her mother would allow us (poor Mrs. Tyler!) to play it.
Rather languidly, she answered: “To-morrow, Cawie!”
But I said: “To-morrow would be too late, because Dinah had to be awful wet to play this game.”
At once she was all eagerness, and commanded me to explain. And so it came about, that the “peshous un” was stripped under loving eyes and rolled in a wet dinner-napkin, and then “packed” in wet sheets, all according to “Hoyle,” or the water-cure doctors. And I engaged to give her several drinks of water during the night, and assured Marie that she would find her “peshous Dinah” all right in the morning, and Marie laughed and talked, while I did the packing. And the doctor found her with a high pulse and red cheeks, but the wet doll was not in her arms. She refused to show her tongue, because she said the last time she put out her tongue at him, he was mad about it, which was very true.
He gave her a powder, she went to sleep, and the rest of us humbly thanked our Creator.
Dinah was snatched out of her “pack” and put in the warm oven to dry, while the other members of the family slept the sleep of the weary and the worn.
Three entire years passed in alternate peace and strife. Acting in the interest of decency and cleanliness, Mrs. Tyler had covered Dinah with fresh linen several times. Little Marie had grown taller, more beautiful, and more impish; while Dinah still reigned supreme, though almost every bureau in the house had in its bottom drawer a wax doll or two, rolled up in towels.